Greed

Open Letter to NFL Owners

Dear NFL Owners:

The purpose of this missive is to implore you to end your attempts to gain an even greater share of revenues at the expense of millions of fans across the nation and globe who love and enjoy National Football League (NFL) athletic competition. At a time when we face great global economic turmoil, you are not showing fans any remorse by being avaricious. As you continue to look to mollify your own selfish interests, you only cause global morale to sink further. While I am not willing to completely agree with some players who claim that you are treating them like “modern slaves,” I do posit that you do economically exploit the professional athletes who work for you. It’s a derisory postulation for players to try to present themselves as “modern slaves” when they are millionaires. This faulty argument made by some NFL players, however, does not let you off the hook.

You make significantly more money off of the labor these professional athletes provide for you. It’s only greed that continues to motivate you to want more and more money for yourself. When people are struggling just to put food in their mouth, you are thinking only about how you can obtain more money to purchase yet another yacht or luxury automobile.

For many people across the globe, the only luxury they have is pulling up a chair to their television and watching an NFL game on Sunday. Because you cannot let your selfishness and insatiable appetite for money go, you are threatening to take away this luxury for people across the globe.

Do you not care anything about the health of your players? By extending the regular football season two games, this increases the likelihood of your players incurring season-ending injuries. The current 16 game regular season is already arduous enough for athletes. To help you to pay for your huge stadiums and bring in more ticket revenues, you would rather mortgage their health. Have you no scruples? The health of NFL players is more important than your bottom line.

You should go back to the negotiating table with NFL players with a serious mindset resolved to reach an equitable agreement with them. Have you ever heard of equity before?

If you prevent people across the globe, especially the American people, from watching their favorite athletes on television and in person, they will make you pay by turning a blind eye to you when football begins the next year that you come to an agreement with the players. Consumers will remember that when they were hurting the most, you took away something that offers comfort to them. I hope that you don’t think that consumers are unsophisticated and gullible. They know that you are responsible for this lockout.

Make a commitment today to reach a solemn agreement with the players, so that football fans can have an assurance that they will be able to witness another great season of NFL football. You may think that you are going to war with the NFL players, but you are really going to war with the fans, and I’m confident that we will inevitably have the last word with you about what we think about your conspicuous selfishness. Do the right thing!

Sincerely,

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Don’t Be a Leech

You should not always have your hands stuck out begging. At some point, you should have something to offer to someone else. When people give to you, learn how to give back to them. People will start to hate seeing you come around them because they know you will have something that you want them to do for you. Do you have people in your life who only call, email, text, and/or visit you when they want something from you and you never hear from them until they want something? Today, I want to let you know they are leeches. If you continue to feed leeches, they will zap all of the blood out of you. You may not understand what’s going on with how you feel,  why things are not going right in your life, why it seems that you don’t have enough time in the day, and/or why you are not able to meet your daily responsibilities. You need to check for leeches in your life. Leeches could be the very reason you are not progressing, improving, and/or feeling the way that you long to feel.

Don’t be so compassionate that you allow people to crumble your foundation. You have to be wise in your giving. Always examine your giving and make sure that you are giving to the right people and places. You are not the savior of the world, so don’t attempt to help too many people because you will be denying yourself from the great things that you need to enjoy for yourself. Helping too many people on your own is simply not healthy and not wise. You will physically, mentally, and emotionally weigh yourself down with stress when you are trying to help everyone. When you need some help, watch how many of those people who you helped will be there for you.

People will hang around you and contact you just to get benefits from you. Now, this can be expected from the complete strangers you may help or the random people you meet, but it’s those friends and family members you have to be more alert about being leeches. Leeches are not always easy to detect. We allow friends and family members to occupy certain spaces in our life that we don’t allow others to occupy. This is the reason why we have to have on more protective clothing when we are around our friends and family—they could be the greatest leeches we have on us. If you are always thoroughly examining yourself, then you will know if your friends and family members are leeches.

We often make ourselves too vulnerable to people who we believe love us and have our best interest in mind. You need to understand that you need to constantly assess those who you make yourself vulnerable to in some way. It can be the venomous people around you who are killing you and pushing you off of your road to greatness. The people who you love and trust can be the very people who are simply using you for what they can get from you. You cannot sit there and allow folks to suck all of the blood out of you and not have enough left for yourself.

I know that it might be difficult to think about your loved ones being leeches, but you have to be willing to examine them as potential leeches. Guard yourself in wise ways. Build necessary walls with certain people in your life. We hear a significant amount of discourse about tearing down walls, but there needs to be more discussion about building necessary walls. Walls exist for a purpose: to make sure that not just anyone can enter.

Beware of the leeches out there—they might be some people you least expect! If you are consciously a leech, stop being one today!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison